New Amiga Group formed for london, who's with me?

[jorkany]

Having a name for something (i.e. U-Boot) doesn't make it alright, as in "OMG, that bouncer's beating the **** out of that clubber!", "Don't worry, that's called He-Boot". I fail to see why U-Boot starts with a text screen, which harks back to the days before the original Apple Mac, that came out in 1984, as well as before its ancestor the Apple Lisa in 1983. PC BIOS ROMs were designed to be compatible with the original IBM PC, which came out in 1981 without any graphics. The classic Amigas always displayed graphic boot screens AFAIK.[/url]

There's no need to qualify 68K Amigas with the term "classic", they are Amigas. The "classic" designation was created by OS4 users to try to muddy the waters and give the impression that the AmigaOne is somehow a continuation of the Amiga. The PPC hardware you saw at the meeting are AmigaOnes, a completely different computer and not related to the Commodore Amiga in any way, as you seem to have noticed.

[Mikey_C]

There's no need to qualify 68K Amigas with the term "classic", they are Amigas. The "classic" designation was created by OS4 users to try to muddy the waters and give the impression that the AmigaOne is somehow a continuation of the Amiga. The PPC hardware you saw at the meeting are AmigaOnes, a completely different computer and not related to the Commodore Amiga in any way, as you seem to have noticed.

That's your opinion, in my opinion, your opinion is wrong, but hey, its your opinion, its no more valid than mine.

[chris]

There's no need to qualify 68K Amigas with the term "classic", they are Amigas. The "classic" designation was created by OS4 users to try to muddy the waters and give the impression that the AmigaOne is somehow a continuation of the Amiga.

Actually the "classic" designation came from one of the owners of Amiga - might have been Jim Collas - and is fairly widely used as a term to refer to 68k Amigas.

@AmigaBruno

I didn't say "It's U-Boot" as an excuse, just to advise what you were seeing.  It is a BIOS which initialises the hardware and boots AmigaOS via Kickstart.  It actually does something very similar to what Kickstart does, and is an annoying initial step.  It would be nice to get Kickstart directly into flash and avoid the U-Boot stage, but that doesn't look likely to happen.

[AmigaBruno]

There's no need to qualify 68K Amigas with the term "classic", they are Amigas. The "classic" designation was created by OS4 users to try to muddy the waters and give the impression that the AmigaOne is somehow a continuation of the Amiga. The PPC hardware you saw at the meeting are AmigaOnes, a completely different computer and not related to the Commodore Amiga in any way, as you seem to have noticed.

I feel I should point out that the Apple Mac has gone through a similar transition to the Amiga, but it's actually gone further and is still produced by the same company, unlike the Amiga. There are at least two different groups of Mac enthusiasts who claim that particular classic Macs are the only true Macs. One group claims that only 68K Macs  are genuine, while another group claims that Power PC Macs running OS9 are the best, and another group is fanatical about Power PC Macs running OSX. The accusations against Apple are that first they gave up their OS for the completely rewritten OSX with the look and feel of Mac OS, but based on NeXTStep, OpenStep, UNIX, and possibly some Amiga code, while later on they also gave up their hardware in favour of Intel x86 PC type hardware.

The Amiga has changed a lot in the past and had some compatibility problems possibly dating from Kickstart 1.2, definitely with Kickstart 1.3, followed by even more issues with Kickstart 2.04, 2.05, 3.0 and 3.1. Users started fitting Kickstart ROM switcher boards onto Amigas supplied with Kickstart 1.3. While Commodore was still manufacturing the Amiga I think there were plans to move to the Power PC chip, but then only third parties produced Power PC upgrade boards. They even planned to abandon Workbench/AmigaDOS for QNX. I think the AmigaOne systems I saw were a continuation of the Amiga, which can run old Amiga software, but need some help to do this. They  do look and feel like a continuation of the Amiga, though.

[Mikey_C]

A reminder that the monthly Amiga North Thames meeting is this coming Sunday (13th January).

Amiga North Thames is based in Greater London UK.

Visit our website for full details http://www.amiganorththames.co.uk

[AmigaBruno]

A reminder that the monthly Amiga North Thames meeting is this coming Sunday (13th January).

Amiga North Thames is based in Greater London UK.

Visit our website for full details http://www.amiganorththames.co.uk

I plan to be there again. I'm glad to read it's in Greater London, because the Post Office and the address on your website don't agree with this. I hope the date 13-01-13 doesn't bring bad luck!

Since my first visit last month, I've been bidding on various classic Amigas on eBay and bought an Amiga A500 Plus, Workbench 2.04, a copy of Deluxe Paint III, a "Hackers utility" disk, and Amiga Logo (i.e. the programming language). I've been outbid on several Amiga A1200s. I started to do some artwork on Deluxe Paint III, but then both my video leads and connectors let me down, so I can't get a display at the moment. I have got an A520 RF modulator and RF lead, and bought an Amiga RGB to SCART lead, which was faulty and took me ages to plug in, then gave a red tinted screen. The shielding and one or more pins were out of alignment and a few of the pins got bent, so I've returned it as faulty. The last time I plugged it in, it just gave a faint outline of the Kickstart boot screen. I don't expect a replacement until at least Monday. I assume from what I saw last time there will be a spare RGB lead and a spare compatible monitor I can connect to. Of course, this is nothing to do with the Internet, but like they said on BBC Click http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/ over 2 years ago it's computing, not communication. Most computers nowadays are being used for communication most of the time. There doesn't seem to be any Windows or even Linux software which works like Deluxe Paint, and I haven't done much with the software GrafX2 http://code.google.com/p/grafx2/ , which is supposed to be like DPaint, but it's not that similar from what I can see.  

BTW, do you have any plans to eat lots of food at this meeting? If so, I won't have much to eat before arriving. I'll bring enough cash.

[chris]

I plan to be there again. I'm glad to read it's in Greater London, because the Post Office and the address on your website don't agree with this.

Well, it's in Enfield, which is technically Greater London, but the very northern outskirts.

BTW, do you have any plans to eat lots of food at this meeting? If so, I won't have much to eat before arriving. I'll bring enough cash.

No, that was a Christmas special.  There will be the usual tea, crisps, biscuits and probably cake, which are free/included.

[AmigaBruno]

Well, it's in Enfield, which is technically Greater London, but the very northern outskirts.



No, that was a Christmas special.  There will be the usual tea, crisps, biscuits and probably cake, which are free/included.

I hope there will be some Cola as well. I think I'll also bring some copies of music tracks I've recorded in MP3 format and see if anyone wants to play them. I noticed some big speaker systems there last time, but not much sound coming from them.

[chris]

I hope there will be some Cola as well.

I *think* there usually is.

[AmigaBruno]

I *think* there usually is.

Well, there was Coca Cola, cake, a large chocolate tart, and Pringles there and we had a good meeting. I took my A500 Plus along and connected to a 1085S monitor, but there was no sound. Both my video leads let me down a few days before this, so I hadn't used my Amiga since then. I did some artwork using Deluxe Paint and tried out my newly acquired Amiga LOGO language package, which only arrived after my video leads broke down, so that was the first time I'd used it. I saw an A4000 or A4000T having its clock battery removed, then later on, I had my A500 Plus opened up to have a look at my clock battery, but it wasn't leaking.

Apart from my Amiga A500 Plus, everyone else had an AmigaOne or similar system based around Sam boards, running AmigaOS 4.1. There were some laptops, one running MS Windows and another running Suse or OpenSuse Linux.

Unfortunately, I didn't notice anyone else at the meeting actually creating anything, only using the Internet, but I know at least one of the people there is the programmer who created PortablE. One of the AmigaOne computers got rebooted several times, probably for an update. There was a story on BBC Click over 2 years ago about classic or vintage computers, criticising the situation where they said that most computers today were being used mainly as communications devices, not for computing. If you own an Amiga, no matter which model it is, then you can use it to create graphics, music, applications, games, and utilities. You don't actually need to connect it to the Internet, because you probably have another device which you can use for that. It may also be an advantage just to sit down in front of an Amiga to create something with no distractions from the Internet.

There was some news about the VIntage Computer Festival happening later this year,and I also think there was an announcement about an event later this month, but I didn't make a note of it. I hope this news will be added to the website.

It would be nice to hear any news about the proposed new Amiga group for London, so long as their meetings don't clash with ANT, but there doesn't seem to be any news. The MightyZorlac has formed a group on this forum, but nothing seems to be happening. His group seems to be about reliving the old days of the Amiga and even writing demos. I think this sounds exciting.